Ravenna, a Study

NCTION AND THE S

which was involved the whole destiny of Europe, the continuance of our civilisation and culture. For let it be said again: these wars of the sixth century were not a struggle to the death between two races, but between two religions; the opponents were not really Roman and Goth, but Catholic and Arian, and in the victory of the f

ed, and unfilled, the prey, for half a generation, of a fundamental war, Italy was materially ruined by Justinian's Gothic campaigns, and so hopelessly that, when in 568 the Lombards fell upon her, she was almost unable to defend herself, to offer any resistance to what proved-and in part

all dangerous to us as a heresy must always be.[1] Therefore Italy never roused herself from her exhaustion, one might almost say her indifference. It was only her material well-being that was at stake, her future was safe. Her great attempt against the Lombards was a spiritual effort, was an effort for their conversio

Renaissance but the heresy of the Teutons which dest

th when Narses finally disposed of Totila in the Apennines in 552; but tha

hat position was secured to her, as I have already said, by her geographical position, which now that Constantinople had reasserted the claim of the empire to Italy established her more than at any time in her history as the necessary seat of mili

ellishment was begun. The church of S. Vitalis begun by S. Ecclesius (c. 521-532) was finished and gloriously adorned with mosaics by S. Maximi

a mater, vera orthodoxa nam ceterae multae Ecclesiae falsam propter metum et terrores Principum superinduxere doctrinam; haec vero et veram et unicam Sanctam Catholicam tenuit Fidem, nunquam mutavit fluctuationem sustinuit, a tempestate quassata immobilis permansit. Therefore S. Agnellus the archbishop reconciled all the churches of the Goths, which in their time or in that of King Theodoric had been built or had been occupied by the false doctrines of the Arians.... He thus reconciled the church of S. Eusebius which Unimundus the (Arian) bishop had built in the tw

ntificalis (ed. Holder-Egger. P

ate and depopulated looked to Justinian to succour her in her misery if she was not to perish under her ruins and her debts. The first step in that work was undertaken in the very year of the peace, in the August of the year 554, and it took the form of a solemn "Pragmatic Sanction" addressed to Narses and to Ant

hat Narses at this time only held a military power in Italy. This is inter

heodoric's-and those of Theodora. But everything done by "the most wicked tyrant Totila" is null and void, "for we will not allow these law-abiding days of ours to take any account of what was done by him in the time of his tyranny."[1] Totila had indeed most cruelly attacked the great landed proprietors whom he suspected of too great an attachment for Constantinop

Hodgkin, op. cit.

k great public works, and tried to repair the destruction caused by the war; but it is probable that in reality he achieved very little. He had enriched the Church; he had re-established the great proprietors in their lands

d brought into the country. But perhaps more important, and certainly more significant, is the twelfth clause of the decree which relates to the way in which the Judices Provinciarum are to be appointed. "We order," says Justinian, "that only fit and proper persons able to administe

ever, should be a Roman thing established upon Roman Law. But are we also to see in this great man the creator of the exarchate, that citadel of the empire in Italy which was to endure, though almost all else perished, till Charlemagne appeared and the empire itself sudd

ch. On the contrary, Procopius and Agathias call him simply the general-in-chief of the Roman army [Greek: o Romaion strataegos], and pope Pelagius calls him Patricius et Dux in Italia, and others, among them Gregory the Great and Agnellus, simply Patricius. But it is obvious that there was something new in the official situation and that certain extraordinary powers were conferred upon Narses. And it is the same with his successor Longinus. All the texts that mention him, including th

as recalled in that year by the foolish and insolent Sophia, the

and through Italy, Europe, owes most, but since it was Justinian who chose and empl

st time and, as it were, in spite of the emperor, brought the first Gothic war to an end, and would, had he been left in Italy a few months longer, have prevented all the long drawn out agony of the second. As it was his achievement, and his achievement alone, made that second war something better than the hopeless affai

reat pillars of the Corpus Juris Civilis which is the legal foundation of mediaeval and of modern Europe, the basis of all Canon Law and of all Civil Law in every civilised country. Of his great ecclesiastical polity perhaps we must speak with less enthusiasm, though not with less wonder; while his glorious buildings remain only less enduring than his codification of the laws. If in Ravenna we are mo

said for eleven years, devoting himself to the resurrection of unhappy Italy. In this we may think he was as successful as the shortness of the time of his rule would allow. The catastrophe that put an end alike to his work and to the regeneration of Italy was

ccuse him of tyranny. "Where Narses the eunuch rules," they said, "he makes us slaves." This cry came to the ears of the emperor for whom it was meant. No doubt, being a fool, he was anxious to be rid of Justinian's pro-consul. However that may be, Narses was recalled, the empress, it is said, sending him a message to the effect that as he was a eunuch she would appoint him to apportion the spinning to the women of her household. To this Narses is reported to have replied, doubtless with much the same smile as that wit

ncorportion of Italy within the empire. But there is this much truth in it we may perhaps think; that had the great eunuch been left in command